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What is very prevalent in America and I believe less so in more bike-friendly countries is that places are designed to keep others out. This has longstanding r
by subpixel 5y ago
What is very prevalent in America and I believe less so in more bike-friendly countries is that places are designed to keep others out.
This has longstanding racial undertones (google why bridges are too low for buses to pass under in Queen, NY) but the same desire to keep the 'other' out has a grounding in class as well.
Where I live, you can't visit unless you have a car _and_ a place to park it, so visitor traffic is minimized, by circumstance that has become design.
- acdha 5y agoThere was an almost comedic example of that around here a couple of years back: people were publicly claiming that expanding a bike path to their suburb would cause increased crime, by which they meant the possibility of black people riding the trail out from Baltimore. Meanwhile, the actual robbers drive because you can't fit enough on a bike to be worth the risk but oddly there's no call to stop building roads.
- maxerickson 5y agoIsn't a lot of property crime targeting cash, drugs, jewelry and small electronics at this point? And then things like bikes and cars. Like looking around my house, there's not much other stuff that you could fence for $1,000 laying around. Which is not to say I think that the concern there was valid.
- acdha 5y agoTrue (although electronics are getting harder as manufacturers increasingly use cloud services which can brick a stolen device) but I think the bigger point is just that most crime happens relatively locally — nobody bikes 20 miles to steal an XBox. I think you’re right that the value density is going down, too - nobody is breaking in to steal CDs and DVDs any more.
- gkop 5y agoThis exception having generated significant interest on HN, proves the rule, so to speak: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29037860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29037860